Advanced Launch Systems

Starting with Pegasus, the first privately developed space launch vehicle, and continuing with the development of the Taurus and Minotaur family of launchers, Orbital has proven to be one of the world's most innovative developers of advanced launch vehicle technologies. Building on this heritage, Orbital continues to lend its engineering expertise to new launch technologies in these main areas:

• New launch vehicle systems
• Launchers to boost research test vehicles to demonstrate new launcher technologies, and
• Platforms used to test new space technologies

Current and recent advanced launch systems programs include:

Taurus II

Orbital is in the early stages of developing a medium-class space launch vehicle, Taurus II, to boost Delta II-class payloads into low-Earth orbit and other orbits. The planned system will leverage Orbital’s heritage of highly successful Pegasus, Taurus and Minotaur space launch vehicles to provide low cost access to space for medium-sized payloads for civil, military and commercial customers.

X-43 (Hyper-X) and HTV

For NASA’s X-43 hypersonic testbed demonstrator program, Orbital provided a specially modified version of our Pegasus rocket to boost the X-43 hypersonic research vehicles to precise altitudes and velocities to demonstrate hypersonic scramjet propulsion technologies. In two flights in 2004, Hyper-X successfully boosted the X-43 vehicles to hypersonic speeds, allowing them to smash the world-records for the fastest jet powered aircraft. 

To aid the U.S. military in the development of hypersonic launch vehicles, Orbital is set to provide two Minotaur IV launch vehicles for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Hypersonic Test Vehicle (HTV) program. In a role similar to Hyper X, the Minotaur IV rockets will boost the hypersonic testbeds to a precise velocity and altitude where the testbeds will separate from the booster and fly under their own power.

Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART)

In an effort to demonstrate spacecraft operations in which robotic systems perform all maneuvers without human controllers “in the loop,” Orbital provided a modified Pegasus upper stage for NASA’s DART experiment. Using the Orbital-built MUBLCOM satellite as a target, the DART experiment was designed to autonomously rendezvous with and perform a number of maneuvers in close proximity of the target satellite.